Clarendon House Publications

11/11/2024

ISSUE # 70 IS HERE!
THE INNER CIRCLE WRITERS' MAGAZINE
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/magazine
This month, Shawn M. Klimek talks to us about his life and work including the fabulously illustrated book The Hungry Thing.
We get to meet Mr Toad in our serialisation of the classic The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and continue our adventures in the next instalment of Pam Van Allen’s sci-fi thriller ‘On the Run’.
Then we have Jack London’s poetic Western gem, ‘All Gold Canyon’ in Master Author Showcase.
Your Author Prospectus starts to open your eyes as to the value of your own message, and Your Biggest Challenge gives you advice on how to turn things around and actually start building a viable career as an author.
AND Marlon S. Hayes tells us about his adventures in the world of audiobooks!
There’s much more, of course, including submission opportunities, a quiz and incredible free gifts!
Enjoy!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/magazine

11/11/2024

OK, so as we have seen the first approach you can take if you want to have fun marketing is to concentrate on the type of writing you absolutely love to do. This pinpoints your most focused audience, the readers who will love reading it as much as you love writing it.
And narrowing that down helps you pinpoint your second angle: what is your writing’s personality?

OK, so as we have seen the first approach you can take if you want to have fun marketing is to concentrate on the type of writing you absolutely love to do. This pinpoints your most focused audience, the readers who will love reading it as much as you love writing it.And narrowing that down helps yo...

09/11/2024

Here’s another way to approach your marketing. You might even enjoy it…

Here’s another way to approach your marketing. You might even enjoy it.Here’s how it works — four potential angles: your target readers, your writing personality, what you first present to readers, and your key work. Depending on the nature of your writing, you might not be able to put all fou...

08/11/2024

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-109

08/11/2024

Continuing with our analogy between narrative points of view in fiction and a football match, we can see that, once we step off the pitch, quite a bit changes…

Continuing with our analogy between narrative points of view in fiction and a football match, we can see that, once we step off the pitch, quite a bit changes.While taking the point of view of the ball, we were following the game from a single viewpoint but one which was very much at the receiving e...

07/11/2024

Carrying on with our football analogy from earlier, we saw that what is called ‘stream of consciousness’ in fiction would be similar to taking the point of view of the ball in a match — the viewpoint would be thrown around, apparently at random, with an intimate knowledge only of its own experiences and not much idea of anything else.
If we step back from the ball and take on the viewpoint of an individual football player, we can compare that fruitfully to what is known as a first-person narrative in which a narrator relays events from his or her own point of view using ‘I’ or ‘we’ and so on…

Carrying on with our football analogy from earlier, we saw that what is called ‘stream of consciousness’ in fiction would be similar to taking the point of view of the ball in a match — the viewpoint would be thrown around, apparently at random, with an intimate knowledge only of its own exper...

06/11/2024

[A repeat of a popular article which appeared some years ago in this blog.]
* for American readers, the ‘football’ to which this article refers is the original English game, which you know as ‘soccer’ - though the principles described herein apply to just about any later variation of the game.
A few years ago, I was pleased to be able to fulfil one of my life’s dreams which was to be attend a professional Premier League football game…

[A repeat of a popular article which appeared some years ago in this blog.]* for American readers, the ‘football’ to which this article refers is the original English game, which you know as ‘soccer’ - though the principles described herein apply to just about any later variation of the game...

05/11/2024

So let’s assume that you have set up a social media group based on a general topic in which you are fascinated, and which is connected to your book or books — for example, a group called ‘Victorian Detectives’, which is associated with your recent series on Shylock Bones, the pirate-turned-detective who lives at 221a Butcher Street (I’m just making this up as an example, go easy on me.)
The group has gathered together a couple of hundred people who are engrossed by Victorian fiction generally and love detectives stories, Sherlock Holmes and all the rest of it. Daily, in the group, members post material about the topic, and you do too, encouraging debate and contributions and everything else that happens in a well-run social media group.
Now, because of their fascination with the same thing that you’re fascinated by, these people are ‘warm prospects’ for your book series. Not all of them are going to rush out and buy your books, but you’ll be able to mention them now and again and perhaps even link to a page where they can buy them — and not be rejected outright. You will get some, if only a little attention — far, far more attention than a spamming and possibly expensive ad campaign will get. You will get, in fact, one or two sales, if you manage this properly and keep the group on-topic rather than turning it into a sales page for your book.
But is there anything you can do to ‘heat up’ your warm prospects so that they become ‘hot’ prospects?
Yes, there is…

So let’s assume that you have set up a social media group based on a general topic in which you are fascinated, and which is connected to your book or books — for example, a group called ‘Victorian Detectives’, which is associated with your recent series on Shylock Bones, the pirate-turned-d...

04/11/2024

You’re probably going to think that I have wandered off the subject of organic marketing here, but it’s in order to make real an analogy which, once you understand it, could quite possibly change the way you view marketing forever — and therefore your path to viability as a writer.
Organic marketing, properly understood, has a parallel in the development of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Settled agriculture fundamentally changed human societies in ways that you may not have considered…

You’re probably going to think that I have wandered off the subject of organic marketing here, but it’s in order to make real an analogy which, once you understand it, could quite possibly change the way you view marketing forever — and therefore your path to viability as a writer.Organic mark...

04/11/2024

https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/oh-no-not-marketing-again-do-i-have-to-part-sixteen-creating-your-own-audience-1

Modern culture is made up of some core concepts, one of which is the idea that the mind is made up of two ‘halves’, the conscious and the unconscious. This notion came in around the time of Freud and has settled itself so deeply into the soil of modern thought that it has become almost sacrosanc...

01/11/2024

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-108

31/10/2024

So what does an average day look like for a writer who wants to undertake organic marketing?
Obviously, the pattern of an individual day will change from person to person, but it’s possible to use the principles of the subject to outline the kinds of things that should happen in order to show how this whole thing works. And you’ll be pleased, I think, to discover where the emphasis lies…

So what does an average day look like for a writer who wants to undertake organic marketing?Obviously, the pattern of an individual day will change from person to person, but it’s possible to use the principles of the subject to outline the kinds of things that should happen in order to show how t...

30/10/2024

NEW RELEASE FROM CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS!
Mystical Moments & Magical Encounters: A Collection of Prose & Poetry by Carmen Baca
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/carmen-baca
Spirits, angels, saints, talking boxes, trees, journals and more live in the pages of this eclectic and esoteric mix of reality and imagination. Ephemeral and eternal worlds meet in the Land of Enchantment through mystical moments and magical encounters. Baca weaves old world traditions, ancestral rituals, cultural customs, and archaic superstitions with the beliefs and spirituality of an insular people known as los Norteños.

Pulling threads from her family’s history and from her own encuentros with the unexplained, Baca offers perspectives about what such tiny fabrics of time might be: are we perhaps visited by the dead? What inspires those wrong place or right time instances which change our lives’ direction? Do miracles exist? Fate? Design or free will? Stitching fact with fiction, Baca hooks readers into exploring possibilities.

She asks, “Have you ever had a moment, a feeling, that you’re in the presence of…of… something for which there is no rational explanation? I’ve felt them; haven’t you? A sudden chill, a presentiment,
A strange sensation awakens.
A whiff of a nostalgic scent,
A fleeting blur in the corner of the eye, a rise or fall of the
Temperature or a breath of wind in the face so sudden
We wonder if we imagine them.
We know who they are.”

From the pen of legendary New Mexico author Carmen Baca comes this wonderful new collection, just in time for Christmas!
Available in paperback or as a Kindle version:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/carmen-baca

30/10/2024

Using our Marketing Mantra, we can effectively set up a profitable writing career. But the fact that it is a ‘mantra’ doesn’t mean that it’s magical or doesn’t require work.
That doesn’t mean ‘hard, boring or uncomfortable work,’ though. It can be quite the opposite…

Using our Marketing Mantra, we can effectively set up a profitable writing career. But the fact that it is a ‘mantra’ doesn’t mean that it’s magical or doesn’t require work.That doesn’t mean ‘hard, boring or uncomfortable work,’ though. It can be quite the opposite.When you think of ...

29/10/2024

Let’s take a closer look at the Marketing Mantra that we mentioned last time:

Attract generally; attract specifically; engage fully; provide more.

Using this sequence, you can discover your audience, service them and enthuse almost anybody about anything. Deviate from it or any of its steps, and you can end up in the marketing wasteland where many of you probably reside currently.

Here’s how it works…

Let’s take a closer look at the Marketing Mantra that we mentioned last time:Attract generally; attract specifically; engage fully; provide more.Using this sequence, you can discover your audience, service them and enthuse almost anybody about anything. Deviate from it or any of its steps, and you...

28/10/2024

There’s a little voice in our heads which questions everything, analyses everything, and often jumps to conclusions. When we are browsing for a product or service, it whispers things like “That won’t do” or “That’s a waste of time” or “I can’t afford that.”
It seems to be part of the way in which human beings evaluate things and make decisions, a conscious critical mind that helps.
But it can be something else at the same time. It can be irrational, while appearing to be the voice of reason itself…

There’s a little voice in our heads which questions everything, analyses everything, and often jumps to conclusions. When we are browsing for a product or service, it whispers things like “That won’t do” or “That’s a waste of time” or “I can’t afford that.” It seems to be part of...

26/10/2024

We’ve been talking about using social media groups as a marketing tool — a marvellous one, unavailable to earlier generations — to gather an audience who are broadly interested in the types of story that you write. By accumulating an audience and making such groups interesting, while occasionally dropping in a comment or two about your own book, members of the group, who are already ‘warm prospects’ for your book, are guided in a non-selling sort of way towards purchasing it. It’s by far the most effective method of creating a following, and while it involves a bit of work, can be much more satisfying than any other form of marketing. It's certainly more effective.
Now I would like to take this a stage further, or deeper, by examining the make-up of your potential reader…

We’ve been talking about using social media groups as a marketing tool — a marvellous one, unavailable to earlier generations — to gather an audience who are broadly interested in the types of story that you write. By accumulating an audience and making such groups interesting, while occasiona...